Examples

But to watch yuppie parents squirm with dread and confusion when anything in their households goes on the fritz is to wonder whether it was such a bad thing for one half of the marriageable population to know how to mend a fallen hem and the other to have rudimentary knowledge of the workings of a fuse box.

"I loved the concept so much I bought another one when the first one went on the fritz," says an Amazon.com review of the Nine Stars DZT-50-9 13.2 gallon sensor can written by Mark Elridge, a 38-year-old computer programmer from Toronto.